


Four Months

by beatricelacy



Category: Happy Valley (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 23:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4282227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beatricelacy/pseuds/beatricelacy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s October and the leaves are beginning to fall from the trees. You’ve always loved autumn. It makes you feel alive, the cold air, and the crisp, brown leaves underfoot. It is strange how everything is so beautiful, even as it’s dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Four Months

It’s October and the leaves are beginning to fall from the trees. You’ve always loved autumn. It makes you feel alive, the cold air, and the crisp, brown leaves underfoot. It is strange how everything is so beautiful, even as it’s dying. You don’t know where you stand with Catherine anymore, and so you spend more and more time down at the allotments or at the mission. Who knew that helping the needy was something you’d take to so much? But Helen is at the mission, and you feel you’d willingly spend extra time on the moon if Helen Gallagher was there. She laughs an awful lot these days. She arrives at the mission smiling, kisses you on the cheek and sets to work, barely stopping no matter how often you tell her to sit down, to rest. Her kisses burn, and you’re not stupid, you can see the sadness behind her smiling eyes. You know what she is doing, you know how she’s masking her sorrow with this veneer of jollity.

But then one day you find her crying, wearily sitting on the stone steps round the back of the church, arms clutched round her knees, and she jumps as she sees you, instantly brushing away her tears. “Oh, Clare!” she says brightly, falsely. “I’m so sorry I don’t – don’t know what came over me.” Her breath hitches and she sighs, not moving as you slowly sit beside her. She looks at you quietly with those kind grey eyes so laced with sorrow, and though neither of you speak, you know what she’s saying even without the words. _I can’t do this. I’m lost. And I’m scared._

You nod silently. _Yes. But I’m here. And I care._ God knows, you know enough about pain to last you a lifetime.

 

 

It is November, and as the weather worsens, so does Helen’s health decline, and she can no longer hide the sudden bursts of pain in her abdomen, or how sometimes she has to sit down too quickly, clutching her head and gasping for breath. November has brought bitter mornings and icy rain, and you’re all too aware of how Helen told you that yes, this is inevitable, and yes, she is going to die. Oh god, how can you live with this? How is it fair that Helen, sweet, beautiful Helen, should die, and that you, foolish, broken mess live on, battling the urge to stick intoxicating needles into your bruised skin? And after all the shit Helen’s been through this last year, all this trauma with Ann on top of her illness – it makes you want to scream with the unfairness of it, to walk up to the moors and howl a long, agonising, mournful cry of anguish.

But you don’t of course. Instead you make her cups of strong sweet tea and remind her to take her tablets, because she has helped you so much, and it’s only right that you should do the same. You’d help her even if she hadn’t helped you, you’d want to help her even if she’d never cast a second glance in your direction. You love her. You’re _in_ love with her.

It rains especially hard as you walk home slowly that night, hands in your pocket and nothing put emptiness in your heart, when it should be so full of love and life. Even if there was the fragile, fleeting chance Helen might love you back, there is no time, no future between you, no nothing. You were doomed from the start, and the cruelty of it takes your breath away.

 

 

It’s December when you’re lying in bed at half past three one morning, unable to sleep, and your phone rings out from the darkness, making you jump. It’s Nevison Gallagher, and you barely register what he’s saying, letting his words wash over you like a tidal wave of pain. Helen collapsed in the bathroom that morning. She died later that night.

The phone slips from your fingers and you sit, numb, the only thing you can hear the sound of Nev’s sobs on the other end of the line. So this is it. This is what life is like without Helen Gallagher in it. You end the call without a word and press your face into the pillow. It smells of hair and the incense you like to burn, and you can only wonder what it would smell like if Helen’s head had been pressed against it, if she slept with you

Next morning, when you wake, everything has been carpeted with a thick, white, blanket of snow. Ryan runs outside, laughing as he yells for you and Catherine to come and play, and you sink suddenly, crumpling down towards the floor, a strange noise tearing from your throat, and Catherine grabs you, holds you, pulls you into your chest as you sob, and Catherine mutters senseless words to you you don’t take in, embarrassed by yourself, weeping on your sister’s kitchen floor.  

If this is what life without Helen Gallagher is like, you don’t want it. The mission is cold without her warmth, you miss her company, her steady, visceral presence. The yearning for the needle picks up again, and you find yourself smoking more and more, standing out in the cold, gasping for breath you don’t have. You seem to spend all your time behind buildings these days.

 

 

Time passes and January comes, a new year you don’t know how you’re going to face. It physically hurts to go to the mission these days to see the place Helen filled with love even when she was scared and exhausted, and you start to spend all your time at the allotments, hands in the earth, working the soil. The snow has melted now, and even though it’s not the season for them yet, you want to grow flowers everywhere you can, blue ones, pink ones, great bushes of lavender, humming with bees; catmint for the little ginger moggy that comes winding round your ankles.

Helen was not in your life for long. She was not as long in your life as the needle, or the smoking, or the earth, or Ryan and Catherine, but somehow, somehow you knew that it was she that had altered you the most. You had always been inclined to addiction, to obsession and you clung to the memory of Helen Gallagher for dear life, terrified of letting you go.

You cried at first, amongst the weeds in the allotment, and then as time went by you raged, wanting to tear everything before you apart, because, how, how, _how_ had this been allowed to happen? And then apathy set in, you drinking tea in your little hut, heart shut up and hands cold, and nothing at all in your allotment grew that month. It took great effort to plant the first lavender bush.

When it bloomed later that summer, and the bees came buzzing as you wished, you cut a sprig of it and carried it, carefully, up to the moor where Helen’s ashes had been scattered. You left the flower nestled amongst the heather and knelt beside it, whispering Helen’s name. You knew you would never be the same, but you would have to always keep on living the best way you possibly can.

 


End file.
